Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town

Hi all,

         The performance "If There're Seasons..." yesterday was simply stunning. The beginning scene began with this poem by E.E.Cummings, but composed into a song "anyone lived in a pretty how town". It's purposely in small letters, by the way. What I'd like to do is to comment on this poem and its theme.

           A brief summary: Anyone and no-one are the most individualistic. The "someones" and "everyones" of the town exhibit no individuality and spawn numerous repetitive generations. The children, with the imagination of youth, realized the love between anyone and no-one but forgetting it as they grew. When anyone dies, the townspeople only bury his body, but the grief stricken no-one mourns his passing and is buried with him. The two then find further love after their burials, more in death than the townsfolk ever knew in life. The townspeople then go on with their lives. 

            It's a tough poem to understand when you only read it once, and I took further reading and explanation by the characters later in the muscial that it actually meant that to be living a normal life can be more interesting than the people who don't, for the people living the normal life, "anyone" and "no one", actually are able to love and appreciate life well, while the people who sought for a life that was exciting, "someone" and "everyone", soon fell into the social mould of a loveless and lifeless society. When anyone and no one died, someone and everyone didn't mourn them, but there may be a day which they will, after a long time.

           And how true it has become these days! Love is only rediscovered and developed after many eyars in life! Many affluent businessmen, Bill Gates being and example, in the end, contribute back to society through similar means as normal charity workers. Speakign of charity workers, Susan Boyle shot to fame only through her normality, her individuality in a normal, peaceful life. Normality, though brushed aside and condemned by fame, is soon a servant of fame, for fame is only a temporal normality, which centres on greed and ignores anything else, while normality is eternal and perennial, because it remembers life, it remembers love. 

            Everyone lives in a pretty how town, it's only a decision whether to become a singularly unique anyone or a conformist everyone.

Cheers,

Darrel

P.S. I know this is very complex, for I'm not very sure myself on whether my analysis is better. Ah well, maybe there'll be a day where I can understand this poem better.